The power of the passive self in English literature, 1640-1770

Challenging recent work contending that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, this study recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Gordon, Scott Paul
Format: Book
Language:Undetermined
Published: Cambridge, UK,New York Cambridge University Press 2002
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Institutions: Trung tâm Học liệu Trường Đại học Cần Thơ
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Summary:Challenging recent work contending that seventeenth-century English discourses privilege the notion of a self-enclosed, self-sufficient individual, this study recovers a counter-tradition that imagines selves as more passively prompted than actively choosing. Gordon traces the origins of such ideas of passivity from their roots in the non-conformist religious tradition to their flowering in one of the central texts of eighteenth-century literature, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa